Although two high-profile campaign-finance reform measures are grabbing all the attention–and threats of lawsuits–the City of Westminster has quietly instituted a reform that’s effectively changed the system. And so far, there isn’t a lawsuit in sight. Both Amendment 15 and a new ban on contributions to RTD’s latest tax-hike measure…
Republicans in the Second Congressional District have ground a dozen different can-didates into fodder for David Skaggs and Tim Wirth. Next year, though, the name of the Democrat running for that seat will change, along with one other thing: The GOP may nominate somebody who has a chance to win…
Paula Larsen, the first woman in America to use a new federal law to help her collect child-support payments, didn’t get a lot of attention for earning this pioneering title. Her ten years of effort, which included a lawsuit against such notables as Denver’s district attorney, didn’t go unrewarded, though…
It was the blackberries, not the cigarettes, that most impressed state senator Ray Powers when he visited sunny Costa Rica for six days this summer as a guest of tobacco giant Philip Morris. A highlight for Powers, who made the trek along with eleven other state legislators from around the…
A state senator who stands barely 5-6 in his wingtips could be more damaging to Pat Bowlen’s hopes for a new football stadium than the defensive line of the Jacksonville Jaguars was to John Elway last December. Last week Bowlen and the Metropolitan Football Stadium Authority finally admitted that there’s…
Democrats and Republicans united? Campaign reformers and fat-cat insiders agreeing on something political? It’s true. Button-down conservatives and ponytailed liberals are coalescing around one common theme: Secretary of State Vikki Buckley is doing a rotten job of interpreting Amendment 15. “She’s dropped the ball completely,” says Pete Smith of the…
Danny Stewart was no choirboy. “He had so many problems,” says his mother, Nancy Stewart. The eighteen-year-old Littleton boy was addicted to drugs and had a long list of petty crimes. Danny was polite and quiet. But he was a crook–and not very good at it. “It seems like he…
When their son’s teacher came into the room one day this spring, Duc and Mai Tran stood out of respect. They smiled an almost embarrassed smile, waved and bowed their heads. Nothing unusual about that, says Diana Nga Miller, vice-president of a community support group for Vietnamese immigrants to Colorado…
Denver mayor Wellington Webb is taking advantage of the upcoming summit of industrial nations to push a personal agenda that ranges from special-interest politics to the interests of an old friend. While he was in Washington last month trying to line up federal money to help pay for the Denver…
Lumpy Ridge, in the northeast section of vast Rocky Mountain National Park, is home to a wall of rocks that was just too inviting for a pair of climbers in the unpredictable weather this past March. Hayner Brooks, a 44-year-old Loveland electrician, and Ken Miller, a 35-year-old electrical engineer from…
It was a deal only a utility could dream up: The state would give US West $25 million to help extend the company’s network throughout Colorado’s public schools, locking up a lucrative market. And the phone giant almost got away with it. Earlier this year, Governor Roy Romer announced that…
Over the past six months, someone allegedly has committed a string of burglaries at the Monument home of state senator Charles Duke, making off with Duke’s pocketknife, part of his 1996 tax file, a single component from his laser printer and a “tie-clip” microphone the legislator had used to bug…
Attorney General Gale Norton is adamant in saying she doesn’t want to go after big tobacco companies the way so many other states have. If that sounds like the position of somebody who has taken money from those tobacco companies, that’s because it is. When Norton ran for re-election in…
The Boulder apartment David Wittlinger rented for his final year at the University of Colorado wasn’t great, but it was okay–until the weather turned cold. The furnace never worked, and calls to the owner and the property manager yielded no heat. Because space heaters would blow a fuse, Wittlinger shivered…
The Greeley sniper’s shot was on target last September 24, hitting teenager Joe Gallegos just below his Adam’s apple. Blood gushed from his back where the bullet left his body. The day had been bloody enough: Gallegos had killed three people 400 miles away, including one who had tried to…
An anti-union lobbyist has so angered normally unflappable state senator Don Ament that he may be the first lobbyist ever banned from doing his job at the State Capitol. The irony is that Ament and the lobbyist, Guy Short, are on the same side. Short is director of Colorado Citizens…
Less than a year after losing the battle over Amendment 2 in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Colorado Attorney General’s office is on the cutting edge of another 1990s-style controversy, although this one has nothing to do with lawsuits. Not yet, anyway. A male lawyer with more than a decade’s…
Under a proposal making its way through the state legislature, prison guards in Colorado won’t be taking any more shit from prisoners. In one of several measures that may make prison tougher for inmates, guards would get further protection from one of the more unpalatable forms of protest launched by…
The brass at the Colorado High Schools Activities Association were worried. They professed to love Gabe Lane as much as everybody else did, and in 1996 everybody heard about Gabe, a mildly retarded boy who was ruled ineligible by the CHSAA to play football with his high-school team. His plight…
